Bond, the carrier, had picked up Miss Farren and her belongings when the train had set her down at the rural railway station. Then came the five mile drive to Huntsdean, over the roads that she had often traversed in her girlhood. The pallid mist clung to every branch of the familiar trees, and veiled the woodland alleys where she had watched the rabbits and squirrels in bygone times. Not a gleam of sunshine welcomed her back to the old haunts; not a brown hare leaped across her path; not a bird sent forth a note of welcome. Nature and Rhoda were in the same mood on that memorable day.
But if the whole scene had been radiant with flowers, Rhoda would still have chosen to "sit down upon her little handful of thorns." She told herself again and again that her good days were done. Was she not coming home to find the house invaded, and her own room occupied, by the wife and child of a thief?
Yes, a thief. She called him that hard name a dozen times, and even whispered it as she sat under the wagon-tilt. It is a humbling fact, that humanity finds relief in calling names. Ay, it is a miserable thing to know that we have fastened many a bitter epithet on some whose names are written in the Book of Life.
The ejaculation might have been applied to Rhoda; for it was a woful visage that emerged from the tilt and met the gaze of John Farren as he came out of the garden gate.
"You don't look quite so young as you did, Rhoda," he said when he had lifted her from the wagon and set her on her feet.
There are birds that pluck the feathers from their own breasts. For hours Rhoda had been silently graving lines upon her face, and deliberately destroying the bloom and freshness that God meant her to keep. But she did not like to be told of her handiwork. When Miss So-and-so's friends remark that she is getting _passé_, is it any comfort to her to know that her own restless nature, and not Time, has deprived her of her comeliness? Many a woman is lovelier in her maturity than in her youth. But it is a kind of beauty that comes with the knowledge of "the things that belong unto her peace."
John looked after her boxes, and paid the carrier. The wagon rumbled on through the village, the black retriever barking behind it, to the exasperation of Bond's dog, which was tethered under the wain. Then the brother put his hands on his sister's shoulders, glanced at her earnestly for a moment, and kissed her.